The Copper Beech (24 page)

‘Maybe it was the light. It’s full of odd shadows at that time of morning.’ Nora spoke kindly.

They exchanged a glance and somehow Maria seemed to know that Nora knew it wasn’t something that had been made up. That it was something which might indeed have happened.

‘I never thanked you properly for putting us right about that young divil, Foxy Dunne,’ Mr Hayes said to Nora Kelly when she called to see him next time. ‘It was absolutely the right thing for young Niall. Foxy taught him to catch rabbits – we have six of them out in the back. All male. Foxy taught him how to work that out too.’

Nora laughed. ‘There’s not much that fellow doesn’t know.’

Bill Hayes looked out his window at the back garden. ‘Look at that. He showed Niall how to build a proper little house for them, and put up a wire run from the hutch. It’s very professional, and he’s only a child.’

‘He’ll go far,’ Nora said. She knew too that visiting The Terrace had a civilising effect on Foxy Dunne. He combed his hair and washed his hands without being asked to. He ate slowly, like his hosts. He was a fast learner.

Nora liked talking to Bill Hayes. He was a quiet man and people who didn’t know him well might think he was a little too precise and fussy. But nobody’s life was easy. Nora Kelly knew it was not a bed of roses living with the gloomy Ethel Hayes, who hadn’t smiled for a long time. She knew that everyone’s business was safe and secret in Number Five The Terrace. And that she would get the best advice that she could be given.

‘Well now, you didn’t come to talk to me about rabbits and hutches. I’m being very remiss.’ He moved back to
his desk and picked up some papers. ‘We do have an offer now … they’re delighted to be able to close the file after five and a half years.’

‘How much?’

‘Thirteen hundred. Now we could get …’

‘That’s fine, and here’s a note from Jim saying he agrees too, in case you think I’m doing all this on my own.’

‘No, no …’ But he took the note.

‘I’ll write tonight. When would we have the money?’

‘Oh, in a week or two.’

‘And would there be a certain percentage legally for him and for Maria?’

‘I’d advise that half be for her, to be invested …’

‘You do know what we are going to do with her portion, don’t you?’

‘Yes, and I must say again how very unwise it is from every point of view. Suppose the child does stay with you, will she thank you for handing away what is her legal inheritance?’

Nora Kelly wasn’t listening … she would write tonight.

She went to the post office to get a stamp, and Katty Morrissey looked up from behind the grille.

‘Well, isn’t that the coincidence! There was a telegram for you half an hour ago. I was going to get Mattie to go out with it.’

Nora felt cold. Her hand trembled as she opened the envelope, and in full view of Katty Morrissey and Nellie Dunne, who had materialised as usual when any drama was about to unfold, she read that Lexi was arriving in Shannon Airport on Friday morning and would be with them on Friday afternoon.

‘Would you like a glass of water, Mrs Kelly?’

‘No, Miss Dunne, thank you very much. I would like nothing of the sort.’ Nora Kelly gathered every ounce of
strength and walked out of the post office, leaving Nellie and Katty to say to each other, before they said it to the rest of Shancarrig, that the school teachers’ time was up. The real father was on his way from the United States to take his child home.

‘You don’t look well, Mrs Kelly.’ Maddy Ross had come up behind her as she crossed the bridge on the way back up home.

‘Neither do you, Miss Ross,’ Nora countered. There would be no sympathy from this young teacher who had her life before her – a life with marriage and children in it.

‘I’m fine. A little tired. I don’t sleep at night. I walk a lot in the woods – it clears my head.’ She had a strange, almost wild, look about her.

Jim had said, over and over, that it was essential for Shancarrig school to keep Miss Ross. Her salary was small, as the Department would only pay the minimum. And only Maddy Ross, who had a house, and a mother with private means of a sort, would be able to live on what went into her envelope every month.

But sometimes Nora thought that Miss Ross had a giddiness and light-headedness that none of their silliest fourteen-year-old girls had ever managed to reach. And more than once she thought, God forgive her, that Miss Ross was almost flirting with young Father Barry. Nora kept her own counsel about this, not even confiding to Jim.

‘Do you sometimes feel the world is bursting with happiness?’ Maddy Ross asked her as they walked together up the road.

Nora Kelly, who could well have done without this feverish conversation, replied tersely that she didn’t think that at all, and particularly not today. So if Miss Ross
would excuse her she would like to be left to her own thoughts.

She saw Maddy Ross shrink away like an animal that has received a blow.

Still, there was no time to think about that now, the young teacher’s nonsense could be dealt with later. Right now she had to cope with the event that she had dreaded since the week after her sister died – the arrival of her brother-in-law in Shancarrig to take his daughter home.

She walked like a woman in a dream. Not since the time of Helen’s death had Nora felt this sensation of being outside her body, as if she was watching another being going through the motions – of filling a kettle, of setting a table.

When Jim came in she was sitting motionless at the table. He saw the telegram and needed to ask very little.

‘When is he coming?’ he said.

‘Friday.’

‘Nora. Oh Nora, my love. What are we going to do?’

He put his hands over his face and wept like a baby.

She sat there stroking his arm, listing the possibilities. Could they leave Shancarrig and hide somewhere? No, that was ridiculous, he would get the guards. Could they pretend that Maria was too sick to travel? Could they get Mr Hayes to brief a barrister in Dublin who would fight a case against her being taken away from them? Each solution was more unlikely than the one which had gone before.

They could ask Maria to beg him. No. They must never do that.

Perhaps for the child it
was
the best. A comfortable living in the New World. A whole lot of cousins, a ready-made family, a welcome home as if the five years since
she left Chicago airport in 1948 were just a pause in her real life.

Nora and Jim Kelly realised that this was one occasion when they could do absolutely nothing. They would have to wait for Friday and all it would bring.

By the time they showed Maria the telegram they had calmed each other sufficiently to speak without letting their emotions show.

‘Is he going to take me away from here?’ Maria asked.

‘Well, we don’t know what he plans, do we? After all, he just says “arriving to visit you”. He doesn’t say anything about … anything after that.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘Now, that’s not the way to start,’ Jim Kelly said.

‘Well, what
is
the way to start …?’ Maria was flushed. They hadn’t realised how independent she had become, how strong in her own views. ‘This is my home. You are my parents. I don’t want to go away with someone I don’t remember, someone who didn’t come for me when my real mother died.’

‘He couldn’t. And you mustn’t begin by making him an enemy.’

‘He
is
an enemy. I don’t want to meet him, I’ll run away.’

‘No, Maria, please. Please, that would be the worst thing.’

‘What would be the best thing?’

‘I suppose it would be to reason with him, tell him how much you think of Shancarrig as your home, and of us as your … well, your people.’

‘My parents,’ Maria said stubbornly.

‘He won’t want to hear that,’ Nora said.

‘I don’t care what he wants to hear. Why should I have
to beg him to let me stay in my own home?’

‘Because life isn’t fair, and you’re only ten years of age.’

Maria ran out the door through the yard, and across the fields towards Barna Woods.

When she came home later that night, she was very silent. And pale. Nora, who knew every heart-beat of this child, knew that it was something else, something not to do with what was going to happen on Friday.

‘Did something happen to frighten you?’

‘You know everything, Mama No.’

‘Was it something you saw?’

‘Yes.’ She hung her head.

Nora’s cheeks burned. How could life be so cruel, that someone must have exposed himself to the little girl on this of all days?

‘You can tell me,’ she said.

‘Not really. It’s really very bad. You won’t believe me.’

‘I will. I always do.’

‘I saw Miss Ross and Father Barry kissing each other.’ She blurted it out.

Immediately Nora knew she was telling the truth. Without a shadow of a doubt she realised that this was indeed what had been going on under her eyes.

A priest of God and their Junior Assistant Mistress.

But even the scandal, and the need to tell Father Gunn tactfully, and the whole attendant list of complications, faded away compared to the shock that it had all given to Maria.

‘Do you remember when you told me Miss Ross had climbed the tree? I didn’t really believe you, but I did later. And I most certainly believe you now. But Maria, we have so much to worry about, you and I. Let us put this to the
very back of our minds, right back behind everything, and later we’ll talk about it. Just you and I. It’s best to tell nobody, nobody at all. These things have explanations.’

‘Don’t send me to Papa Lexi.’

‘You’ll be strong and good when he comes. I’ll help you every step of the way. We’ll ask him can you share your time between us. Hey, wouldn’t that be great? Two countries. Two continents. And we all want you. Not everyone has that.’

‘Will it work?’

‘Yes,’ said Nora Kelly, knowing that she had never spoken such an untruth in her whole life.

They survived the four days to Friday.

People were very kind, which they expected, but also very tactful which they hadn’t expected. They did practical things.

Mrs Ryan in the hotel looked up the time of the flight, and since it would be arriving in the early hours of the morning, worked out what time he could be expected in Shancarrig. Maybe lunchtime. If it would be easier they could have lunch at Ryan’s Commercial Hotel, she suggested, a private room.

Mr Hayes, the solicitor, offered to take him through the steps of the settlement one by one, pointing out how it had been the best thing to do.

Dr Jims dropped by with sleeping tablets in case they were finding the nights long.

Leo Murphy, daughter of the Major up at The Glen, said that Maria could come up and hit a ball around on the tennis court if she liked. Even though she was four years younger it would be all right, because of things being difficult.

Young Father Barry said, with eyes of glazing sincerity,
that God was a God of Love above all, and that he would open this man’s heart to see the love the Kellys had for Maria.

Nora Kelly preferred not to think too deeply about the God of Love that Father Barry interpreted, but she thanked him all the same.

Father Gunn said that Polish Catholics were very devoted to Our Lady, and that Mrs Kelly should show him the plaque on the wall, where the school had been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

Foxy Dunne said he had heard there was a bit of a problem, and he knew some very tough people, or his brothers did, if reinforcements were called for. Jim Kelly put on his sternest face when refusing this offer, but gripped Foxy by the arm and told him he was a great fellow for all that.

Eddie Barton told his mother that the gypsies were coming again – wouldn’t it be great if they were to kidnap Maria and then for her to be found and brought back after the man had gone back to Chicago.

Mrs Barton was altering Nora Kelly’s best dress for her, with a trim of lace down the front, and on the collar and cuffs. She wanted to look the equal of anyone in Chicago for the visit. ‘I only tell you what Eddie said, just in case. It might work,’ she said, mouth full of pins.

‘God bless you both,’ Nora Kelly said, looking at her pale reflection in the mirror.

In many ways it was like a Western where they are all waiting for the gunmen to come to town. Down by the station Mattie the postman happened to be waiting with his bicycle, just waiting, looking into the middle distance as it were. Sergeant Keane was sitting on a window sill by the bus stop, throwing the odd word to Nellie Dunne
who had come out from behind her counter to stand at her doorway.

The Morrisseys in the butcher’s shop were making frequent sorties out on to the street, and Mrs Breda Ryan from the hotel seemed to find a lot of activity that took her to the entrance porch of their premises.

Although none of them would have admitted it, and no one pretended to see the curtains of the presbytery move as Mrs Kennedy watched from one window and Father Gunn from another … they were all waiting.

Someone would let the Kellys know the moment the man came into the town. They never thought he would arrive by car, and because it was an ordinary car, not a big American Cadillac, nobody knew it was Lexi when he drove into Shancarrig and looked around him to see where the schoolhouse was.

Not seeing it in the centre or near the church he took the road over the Grane and arrived at a huge copper beech tree, where the one-storey building had the notice Shancarrig National School.

Behind was the small stone house of Jim and Nora Kelly. They were sitting waiting for the message that would tell them by which route he had arrived. They certainly had not expected the man himself.

He was big and handsome, fair curly hair around his ears, eyes dark blue. He must be thirty-six or thirty-seven. He looked years younger – he looked like a film star.

Nora and Jim stood in their doorway, their sides touching for strength. She longed to hold her husband’s hand, but it would look too girlish. It wasn’t in their manner to do a thing like that; hip to hip was enough.

‘I am Alexis,’ he said. ‘You are Nora and Jim?’